


unwillingly and slow

by theviolonist



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Multi, Threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-31
Updated: 2012-05-31
Packaged: 2017-11-06 10:23:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/417787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/pseuds/theviolonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn't on the agenda, but then these things never are, are they?</p>
            </blockquote>





	unwillingly and slow

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Klaus Nomi's Cold Song.

  
_See'st thou not how stiff  
And wondrous slow  
Far unfit to bear the bitter cold_  
  
The Cold Song – Klaus Nomi  
  
  
It wasn't on the agenda. Everything that happened, it wasn't on the agenda, but then these things never are, are they?  
  
It's not like she came out of nowhere either (except she did, one second she wasn't there and the next she just  _was_ , but there had been others before, pretty legs and body bending at the waist, so easy to break in two) but he wasn't expecting her.  
  
It had always been the two of them before, the others of course too, the towers of their fortress, but the two of them above all,  _together_  in this way you can only be with a lover. They weren't lovers.  
  
They never will be.  
  
And he won't lie – but when  _doesn't_  he lie –, he didn't expect it when he found her there, between them, holding onto Louis's arm like a vine, her nails (pink pink like a crescent sun) digging into his flesh. She smiled at him,  _you can't keep him_ , and he thought of his own nails, blunt and showing skin.  
  
He's not used to being wrong.  
  
*  
  
And he had it all figured out (always) and he never made mistakes (never) but maybe (maybe) it was all a little too excessive and of course he didn't see it coming, and it came, it came, sharp bitter fucking snow right in his face, cold and wet and bruising.  
  
She laughed at him, one morning, and he knew, of course he knew, what else could she be there for? But fuck if that didn't take his breath away, her movie-star smile (but she's not the star), white and glossy even at ten a.m. on a day off. Louis didn't notice. Louis doesn't notice this kind of things. He, too, in his own way, thinks he has it all figured out.  
  
And Harry sees the house of cards falling down, but he's not going to be the one to blow the whistle, don't count on him for that (don't count on him for anything).  
  
He remembers this morning like a dream, the edges worn like old cotton. He sat down, wood hard beneath his thighs, and he smiled back.  
  
 _Ain't gonna lose that game_ , he thought, and she smiled again and he didn't know at the time but he wasn't playing the right game at all.  
  
*  
  
She's not pretty. She's not his type (he likes his women overblown, big and blooming like flowers, messy colors and rich honeyed skin) and she's not Louis's type either (Louis's type is Harry). Her lips are  _wrong_  – too full or too twisted or too whatever, and he can tell, he's got the best smile, he's like a fucking champion of smiling. He can win anyone over.  
  
Maybe that's the problem. Maybe he thinks he's the king of the world.  
  
She's a little plump, she's a little rich girl, she wears jean shorts and sandals and the same pretentious sunglasses as Louis, when he saw them at first he thought  _brother and sister_ , but he thought it like a papercut, like a mean little jab, and now when he sees them he thinks, _L_ _ouis and Eleanor_ , and that is so much more dangerous and he's going to lose himself.  
  
But it's the only thing he knows how to do (lose himself – in the heat bleeding from Louis's skin, in the endless legs of the girls in the clubs, in the fumes of Zayn's cigarette, acrid and bitter, in One Direction, the silly meanness of it).  
  
'Come here,' he says, and Louis comes, but Harry is looking at Eleanor. _C_ _ome here_ , he says. She lits a cigarette.  
  
Sometimes he thinks of what would have happened if he'd been a girl (he's a freak) and it kind of scares him that he would have wanted to be like that, sharp fingers loosely holding a cigarette, mouth sucking on the burning ember.  
  
*  
  
He doesn't know what (who) to believe – doesn't know if she's reckless or calculating, if she's Lolita or not, if the alcohol she guzzles down and the laughs she hisses are pretend. They probably are – she looks like she's all pretend, from her tanned legs to the skin of her palm, tender like she can still be hurt.  
  
'Harry,' she says, drowned in the loud beat of the music, and she falls against him, heavy and perfumed. He doesn't stop dancing. She slips in his arms, a lolling ragdoll, laughing off-key.  
  
Louis isn't watching her. His gaze is boring into the small of harry's back (he's never been good at that kind of things) and Harry turns around and slides towards him.  
  
They end up grinding against each other, a three-headed hydra - - Eleanor slow between them, bringing them together, one hand hot against Louis's nape and the other curled around Harry's forearm, her cheek pressed against his.  
  
 _No_ , Harry thinks, but his body say  _yes, yes, yes_ , his blood chanting it like a psalm.  
  
*  
  
'You don't like me very much, do you?' she says one day, not looking at him, her hip leant against the wooden counter, creamy with sun.  
  
'You're wrong,' he answers. The words are slow in his mouth.  
  
She laughs.  
  
'You laugh a lot.'  
  
She turns towards him sharply, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. Her fingers are still in the air, ready to dig in her pocket for her crumpled pack of fags (she only pretends not to smoke for the television). 'And you're a freak.'  
  
He shrugs. He would make a joke, but the heat exhausts him, and he doesn't need to pretend for her.  
  
'Louis -,' he starts. 'You take care of him, right?'  
  
The fumes are twirling in the air, curling around her fingers like chains.  
  
She shrugs. 'Not really.'  
  
He can't say anything, so he doesn't.  
  
*  
  
And they love each other, you know. Harry can't remember ever having loved anyone that much, like their burning joint palms and the nuclear force of their smiles, this exhilarating  _connection_. It scares him sometimes ( _closerclosercloser_ ), but he's scared of everything and he never runs. No exception.  
  
'You bastard,' he whispers fondly in Louis's collarbone instead of saying, _I_ _love you_. Now that he's – who he is, he's learned not to tell the truth, and he's good at it, he's really good. Top fucking student.  
  
'I love you too,' Louis says, and it's like a punch in the gut, the way he  _means_  it and says it like it's nothing that everyone can hear, nothing to lay himself bare and let everyone have a go at his spilling bowels.  
  
'Shut up, you idiot,' he says, and slaps a hand on his mouth. Louis laughs and licks his palm. It probably tastes of alcohol and sweat and the melting stroboscopic lights.  
  
And suddenly (suddenly, it happens) they're kissing, kissing Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles in a bar with witnesses who don't see anything (it's like a murder). It feels like being electrocuted.  
  
It doesn't last long. Harry drags his fingers in Louis's hair, but it's a – a reflex more than anything, a gift from all the girls he's kissed, the plump lips heavy with glucose. Eleanor smiles like a snake behind them, her hair blinking blue-green-red.  
  
She wraps a hand around Harry's wrist, crushing his pulse point.  
  
'Hands off, Styles,' she says, her fingers sticky with sugar. He wishes she would say,  _touch me instead_ , but she doesn't.  
  
He watches her drag Louis away. Louis doesn't care, never was able to decide between them (the summer hurricane and the fresh spring rain). _G_ _row a spine_ , Harry thinks, strangely spiteful.  
  
At night, when he's danced the desire and the anger out of his body, he thinks of it growing like a tree, the white bones twisting to form branches, splitting into buds that look like ivory spades.  
  
*  
  
She thinks he's stupid, a silly eighteen-years-old boy, too pretty for his own good. She knows he sees through some of her pretenses (the garish lipstick and the traps she lays, barely good enough for rabbits) but she thinks she's got her walls secured and Louis in the palm of her hand, shimmering like liquid gold. And maybe she isn't wrong, but maybe she is. Maybe there's more to him, more flesh in the crevices of his body, more thoughts banging in his skull. Who knows?  
  
And he doesn't get what it is about her that draws him in, because she's a bitch, a real bitch, tough as nails with her iron heart and her elastic smiles. He shouldn't like her, but he does, and it doesn't bother him until he does, until he sees her slipping into the doorway and he thinks, _I_ _want her_ , sharp blinding white flashing through his stomach.  
  
'yYou're staring,' she says meanly. Harry glares. She laughs.  
  
Louis should act proprietary, but Louis doesn't do a lot of things he should (it's funny, that – how the list of 'things they should do' got so long compared to the one of 'things they can do' since they got famous).  
  
'Don't flatter yourself.'  
  
He goes on a date with her and Louis because it's sort of what they do. Maybe Louis pushed them into it, maybe he didn't (he too is a fucking mystery – but the truth is that no one is simple in their little bubble, despite what they try to make everyone believe).  
  
They go to the movies. Louis and Eleanor hold hands (she's wearing jeans, her initials sown on one of her back pockets like a strange delicacy). Harry and Louis hold hands too (they race to a lamppost drenched in murderous light, laughing with their heads thrown back). Harry and Eleanor look at each other from the edges of stranger love.  
  
 _'You don't like me very much, do you?'_  
  
She was right, he thinks as he looks at her, wanting to put his hands on her hips and make her spin until she goes dizzy. He doesn't like her (but somehow it makes it worse –  _what is this_ ).  
  
She looks at him coyly through her eyelashes (shorter than Louis's, he notices absently), as though she knew what he was thinking, but she can't, he's sure of it.

  
*  
  
She won't leave.  
  
She won't leave but she won't do what he wants either (he doesn't want her to leave, not anymore). She makes him grind his teeth because he can't  _have_  her. Sometimes he feels so empty handed.  
  
'El,' he calls. she looks up at him sharply, alcohol gleaming on her lips. He never calls her that.  
  
( _why don't you come a little closer_ )  
  
'You wanna dance?'  
  
They're more alike than she thinks, he realizes as he watches her wind her long legs around Louis. He thinks of her against him on the dancefloor, her breasts heavy and tight on his chest and her hands sweaty at his nape. arousal coils around his bowels.  
  
'No,' she answers.  
  
Harry ends up with Louis's thigh rubbing against his crotch, heavy light pouring in his eyes from above, whispering promises he won't keep against the shell of his ear. Eleanor watches them from the outside of love, and Harry thinks about how the three of them of won't be together, ever, but then it's gone in a flash and everything is pounding in his ribcage,  _mineminemine_  melting into  _oursoursours_  and then into nothing at all.  
  
Fade to white, he thinks as he gets lost in Louis's mouth.  
  
(He's always wanted too much, and this time is no exception.)  
  
*  
  
It's fall, and the sun has caught them by surprise. They're surprised and maybe a little sad to have outgrown their children bodies, but they're lazy and still young, tinged golden with shadows on their shoulders.  
  
It's a game of mirrors – Louis pretending not to watch Harry, his eyes bare and dangerous in the orange light, Harry pretending not to watch Eleanor and the bracelets dangling on her porcelain wrists, Eleanor pretending not to see them at all.  
  
'What would you do?'  
  
Louis – he looks ferocious, Harry thinks absently, and a bit feral. Harry almost expects lichen to bleed out of his eyes and drag them both into the wilderness.  
  
'What?'  
  
Louis flicks a wrist towards her. She pretends not to notice. 'If you had her.'  
 

There's a forest somewhere in the horizon in front of them. It looks like it's burning, ochre-orange-red licking the sides of the mountain. 'It's not that simple, Lou.'  
  
(And it really isn't, he realizes. That almost surprises him more than Louis talking about it does.)  
  
'I'm not selfish, you know,' Louis says, knuckles white and clawing at his phone ( _you are_ ). 'I'd give her to you,' ( _you can't_ ) 'but you'd do nothing but break her.' ( _she's not yours_ )  
  
He walks away. Harry wonders why Louis only ever speaks in half-truths to distract himself from the ten-stories building collapsing in his chest, sharp gravel scraping his lungs.  
  
He looks at Louis and Eleanor on his lap, her legs stretched before her, laughing like accomplices, their teeth shiny white in the sunlight, ready to bite.  
  
 _She'd break me too_ , he thinks, but he likes being broken, so it doesn't count.  
  
*  
  
Eleanor Calder burns low with scalding vodka in her veins. Sometimes she forgets about being  _appropriate_  and she lets herself dream about wide-winged birds and bouts of sharp wind on the seaside, with the rumbling green sea licking the sand at her feet. True love has passed her by, but she never really cared for it anyway.  
  
She lets her limbs twist and wind and slip in the darkness – and when she's there, she allows herself to be flamboyantly beautiful, and she doesn't miss (she wishes she could) the sparks in Harry's eyes. He falls in love far too often.  
  
And she says no to dance, and no to fall into his arms – she preferred him the quiet and the sad, and she was right. She's not sorry. She doesn't feel guilty. They're more alike than she thinks, and it scares her.  
  
She's still a girl, you know? She's still a girl, a venomous flower in this cruel, cruel world, and this is the only way she's going to make it to the finish line, if she doesn't let boys lure her into this love that she doesn't want, that she doesn't  _need_.  
  
Of course the  _thumpthumpthump_  of the music and the  _taptaptap_  of his fingers on Louis's hips like a taunt and the  _smacksmacksmack_  of their drunken kisses that feel like slaps win her over, make her stumble and drag her on her knees.  
  
She kisses him with teeth and a tang of acrid smoke, vodka swirling in the crevices of her perfect-girl lips.  
  
Louis watches, silent like a statue.  
  
*  
  
She won't leave.  
  
This is her golden ticket, her picture in the magazines, her face on the cover of _V_ _ogue_   _magazine_ in ten years because she worked so fucking hard at being a woman and no one realizes just how difficult that is. Harry Styles doesn't have his place in the equation (of course he does).  
  
'I love you, you know,' she says, lying on her stomach, the sheet brushing her spine.  
  
Louis laughs. He's thinking about Harry and a faceless woman in the next room, moaning and writhing the fury out of their bones. 'I know.'  
  
 _keepmekeepmekeepme_  
  
She looks up at him, the hair that falls on his forehead and the secrets that crinkle his smile, and she wonders why she hadn't realized before.  
  
They kiss with gentle lips, like you kiss a dying lover in quicksand, slow, swiping tongues. They let the pleasure creep into their bodies and surprise them, and when it does, they breathe out, and they laugh.  
  
*  
  
She's here now.  
  
She's one of the hands of his wrist when they pull him into a corner, clinking silver bracelets and a pretty ring that Louis gave her. sSe's here with the sole of her foot against his thigh, and she's here in the couch between Louis and him. She has a name, and they call her El, Elle, pretty vowels that sound French.  
  
She still isn't pretty, but she's here, and she isn't going away.  
  
They go out – the flashes go off – Louis doesn't hold her closely enough – her hair flies in long buttery curls – and her lips, painted a shade that can't decide if it's pink of red.  
  
It's her on the pictures – she smiles ( _it's her golden ticket_ ), Louis too ( _he plays the game_ ) and Harry ( _not the right game at all_ ). They stand too close, like they can't breathe if the others aren't there, and it's got to be true, at least a little.  
  
They shield themselves from the flashes, hands above their heads as though the lights were a rain that they can't escape. They run, limbs knocking when no one can see them (when).  
  
It's because they can't be alone, Eleanor thinks as she tugs Harry closer and Louis plasters himself against her back, one night, somewhere, the future fading before her. They can't be together either, and they can't be happy, but this is better than nothing.  
  
'Cheese,' someone says, faceless behind a black camera.  
  
They smile, linked hands, fingers crossed behind their backs.  



End file.
